So far, I’ve unearthed my teenage music collection, including They Might Be Giants, Savage Garden and Matchbox 20. I found a disc from my trip to eastern Germany, with pictures of me in Berlin, Dresden and Leipzig. Most exciting was the re-discovery of my graduation PowerPoint, including a brief photo history of the first 18 years of my life, complete with a Five For Fighting soundtrack.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a recording of the actual event, or I could share with you a much more poignant image of my quirky secondary education: My graduating class shuffling onto a small stage with the Imperial March (Darth Vader’s theme song) playing in the background.

Instead, here’s a few pictures of growing up in Alaska. I hope you enjoy them.

Taking a little hike with my dad.

My mother trying to induce a love of nature.

Building a snow dragon in my front yard.

My sparky younger sister, Sydney.

I’ve been here long enough that I don’t notice a lot of the differences any more. I don’t hear the accents of people I know well. Even better, I don’t hear my own, sticking out like a flat vowel. And I don’t think twice about queuing, revising, pulling, or any of the other verbs I would not be doing in the States. (All right, small joke there. I certainly would think twice about pulling someone, but I wouldn’t find the use of the word unusual.)

There are many things Britain does better than the U.S. However, many Brits will probably be unfamiliar with some of the areas where Americans excel:

1) Marshmallows. My mom just brought me chocolate vanilla swirl marshmallows from Hawaii, but even the most basic American marshmallow is roughly 10,000 times better than the U.K. version. (Also, if you haven’t made a s’more, do so now.)

2) Return policies. Many stores in the U.S. offer a full money-back guarantee, no questions asked. This is typical for expensive items, but even includes a lot of shoes and coats. The idea is that customers won’t abuse the system if the products they buy are good. It also means that you can return shoes that make your toes bleed. That seems sensible to me.

3) Animals. This is a blameless discrepancy, but it exists nonetheless. I grew up with moose, brown bears, black bears, porcupine, wolves, coyote, foxes, lynx, salmon, orcas, belugas, eagles, owls and hummingbirds. Many states, while lacking moose, offer a similarly diverse wildlife population. Bottom line: If you want to see wild animals, head for the American hills.

One of the themes this year is “distance”. I spend 90 percent of the year communicating with my family via email, Skype and phone, so I can relate to distance as a social problem. On the family level, distance is a tangible barrier to overcome. Some technologies help shrink this distance, but there is a lot of room for development.

I have already mentioned one distance-shrinking technology: Skype. The service is a revolution. Previously, the main alternative was expensive long distance calls. Skype cuts the cost of communicating with my family to almost nothing (I still occasionally have to make calls on my cell phone). It is much easier to stay in touch.

Moreover, the quality of our communication is better. Before Skype, I spent a lot of time emailing photos back and forth with my family. We now use video chats, so I can just show my mom my new haircut, she can show me what’s growing in the yard and my sister can give me a tour of her new apartment. In effect, the distance between us has shrunk again. I feel like I am almost there.

Of course, Skype chats are not the same as actually being there. For that, I need a long distance flight. Short of flying home (which I do about once a year), there must be many other opportunities for clever technology to make a real impact.

I’m off to study for two more exams, but I’ll be thinking about this problem. I welcome any comments.

Image credit: anyjazz65